Monday, May 16, 2016

Please Don't Be a Teacher

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth’”. – Dan Rather

I hope my title doesn’t offend you, but if it does, maybe there’s good reason.

If you’re looking for an easy job, one where you punch in and out at a regular time, please don’t be a teacher.

If you’re looking for a job where you don’t bring your troubles or your work home with you at the end of the day, please don’t be a teacher.

If you see the job, and all you see is summers “off”, please don’t be a teacher.

Because, you see, you have it all wrong.

There are no “off” hours to teaching. Teachers earn a salary. I very deliberately use the word “earn” there, as opposed to “teachers are paid” a salary. Believe me when I say that teachers earn every penny of their low wages. Teachers arrive early and stay late. We bring our work home and continue working hours after the school day has ended and we work weekends. Yes, we know going into this career that this is how it is going to be and we do it anyway.

The thing is, good teachers don’t really “choose” teaching. It’s more like it chooses them. Good teachers, great teachers, feel a pull – a call – to teach.

We fully realize the responsibility we have. This is not a joke to us. We did not take this job just for the holidays. By taking this job, we know we are the ones responsible for teaching our kids the information they will be required to know for all future years to come. That is pressure. Their knowledge base is entirely dependent on what we put there. Everything we teach, everything we say has to be accurate, has to be reliable because we have to be trustworthy. They have to know that they can count on us no matter what because if once we prove to be doubtable, they will always be hesitant. We have to keep the bar high.

Being a teacher has no “hours of operation”. We will worry about our kids because once they are in our class, they are “our” kids. It doesn’t matter what grade we teach. I have a sister who teaches third grade. I have another sister who teaches eleventh grade. I teach college. The one thing we all have in common is that we worry about our kids. When a student is going through something, it translates into problems in the classroom, problems in the work. I worry about my students as fellow humans. Sometimes, when we know their particular horrible situations, the worry is enough to keep us up late at night. Being a teacher means teaching the whole person, seeing the whole person, and not just the parts that are masked and presented in a classroom. Being available to talk when needed is important.

We give so much of ourselves during the school year that when the summer comes we are exhausted. However, despite the large number of teacher friends I have, I do not know a single teacher who actually gets a “summer off”. Summers are used for planning our fall courses, for revising, revamping, and attending conferences and professional development. Many teachers use this time for the expected writing, research, and publication they have not been able to pursue during the fall and spring semesters. We’re still working; we’re simply working without the students being present.

Teachers teach because we love connecting to our students. We have a passion for our subject and want to tell as many people about it as possible. We take seriously the fact that it’s our job to teach them all the things, that we have to make the determination of what they do and do not need to know at that moment.


The moment we take this job for granted is the moment we begin to fail in our position. It’s the moment we lose credibility and passion. If you only think about paychecks and holidays, please don’t be a teacher. I don’t want my children in your class. 



Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Gift Boxes

“Inspiration is the greatest gift because it opens your life to many new possibilities. Each day becomes more meaningful, and your life is enhanced when your actions are guided by what inspires you.” – Bernie Siegel

When we were younger, we would buy a gift for someone and put it carefully in the perfect box. There it would rest, perfectly nestled, amongst its folds of tissue paper. There was not a flood of extra space for the gift to slide about, nor was the gift so cramped that it was wadded into itself. It was perfectly – beautifully – portioned into a box that fit it just so.

Life, we thought, was supposed to be this way.

It was supposed to be perfectly portioned, doled out in just the right amounts, not overlapping, but giving each life event just the right amount of time to occur. Thinking about life when we were younger, we never dreamed of just how messy and out of shape life could become. College in four years, five tops. Then marriage. Then kids. A good job, of course. Those are the vague outlines we tended to see. And really, we saw very little beyond them.

We grew up.

We realized that life isn’t so pat and neat. Life is much less tidy than we ever thought it was. Somehow, as we’ve grown, this chaos of a life has blossomed around us. Identities that we have always drawn thick, hard lines around need to be rethought because those thick, hard lines? Really, they mean nothing to anyone but us. And the more we bluster on about them, the more foolish we look. We must open our minds, and close our mouths.

Kids have come into our lives creating a patchwork family. One daughter has these grandparents and another daughter has those grandparents but this daughter doesn’t share those grandparents and that daughter doesn’t share these grandparents but they both share my parents. We are a living, breathing Venn diagram.

Life looks nothing like the wondrous future we once imagined for ourselves back in our youth, back in the spirited days of our late teens or even our early 20s when we were still invincible with heady exhaustion and the absolute overwhelming possibility of life. Everything was still before us, all the gifts and joys and, yes, trials, of life were yet to come.  No, this is not the future we imagined for ourselves then.

I won’t say it’s better. But we have been gifted something in all of the messiness. There is something freeing in leaving the vision of our youth, in mentally off-roading, in getting in the mess of life to really feel it. We have to change. We have to grow with it. We have to allow ourselves to be changed by it. Never lose a chance to be affected. We have rediscovered how to improvise. Now, when we buy the perfect gift, we no longer require the perfect box. The box may strain at the edges. It may be too rounded at the top, and the sides may be taped together. Perhaps the box is too large and the gift shimmies and slides and wallows in the luxury of space. The gift is what matters. Not the container. This is what we have learned.